Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Youth Suicides Up

New government figures show a surprising increase in youth suicides after a decade of decline, and some mental health experts think a drop in use of antidepressant drugs may be to blame.

The suicide rate climbed 18 percent from 2003 to 2004 for Americans under age 20, from 1,737 deaths to 1,985. Most suicides occurred in older teens, according to the data — the most current to date from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

What I find disturbing is that suicide statistics don't become available to the public often for two or three years. Is suicide that unimportant?

58 Comments:

"On college campuses, counselors are seeing double the number of depression cases and triple the number of suicidal students. The American Psychological Association reported in 2003 that counselors on the nation’s college campuses were seeing significant increases of these and other “severe psychological problems.” Why are the nation’s brightest young adults flooding the student health centers to overflowing? What has changed since the late 1980s to produce such emotional and psychological devastation among the nation’s college students?

A campus psychiatrist at a major American university has written a book attempting to answer the questions about what has gone wrong. The book, Unprotected, (written anonymously but revealed to be Dr. Miriam Grossman from the student health services of the University of California, Los Angeles) reveals that “radical politics” has replaced “common sense” in the campus health and counseling centers to the detriment of students’ well-being. In short, Dr. Grossman declared that her profession was “hijacked” and that college students are the “casualties” of “radical activism” by the health professionals on college campuses.

The nation’s 17 million college and university students are being denied truth while their risky behavior is condoned by the prevalent social agenda on campus. Dispassionate objectivity and compassionate concern for an individual’s health and well-being have been replaced by social activism. Now, the “polarization” of “opposite” sexes and a “binary gender system” must be replaced by androgyny and “alternative sexualities.” Nobody dares mention that emotionally destructive behavior produces negative consequences. Ideology takes precedence over consequences. In fact, consequences are never mentioned except in the context of smoking, diet, exercise or sleep. Certainly, no one mentions the “fascinating research on the biochemistry of bonding” which reveals that casual sex is hazardous to a woman’s mental health.

. . .Another profound misrepresentation takes place on college campuses: by focusing exclusively on career, many women will pass their window of opportunity for finding a husband and having children. After age 30, a woman’s chances of conceiving drop by 75 percent; if she gets pregnant, her chance of miscarriage triples, the rate of stillbirth doubles and the risk of genetic abnormality is six times greater. Sadly, as Unprotected points out, the waiting rooms of infertility centers are crowded with professional women who bought into the myth that they should focus on career and wait to have a husband and children.

The basic message of Unprotected is that today’s women are amazingly misinformed and unprotected."

Note that older women having six times greater chance of genetic abnormality for a previous controversial topic on this blog.

I think the above has quite a bit to do with it. Also the old saying, "Idle hands are the devil's playthings." Our leisure time in America, especially for young people, is amazingly high. 100 years ago a young person's life would be consumed with school, work, family and church leaving little time to be self absorbed. Today kids aged 13 to 15 watch an average of 24.6 hours of TV per week. Much of it is completely unhealthy and causes children to have unrealistic expectations. Toss in a lack of moral framework, minimal time with parents, few role models and it is a recipe for disaster.

"On college campuses, counselors are seeing double the number of depression cases and triple the number of suicidal students. The American Psychological Association reported in 2003 that counselors on the nation’s college campuses were seeing significant increases of these and other “severe psychological problems.” Why are the nation’s brightest young adults flooding the student health centers to overflowing? What has changed since the late 1980s to produce such emotional and psychological devastation among the nation’s college students?

. . .The nation’s 17 million college and university students are being denied truth while their risky behavior is condoned by the prevalent social agenda on campus. Dispassionate objectivity and compassionate concern for an individual’s health and well-being have been replaced by social activism. Now, the “polarization” of “opposite” sexes and a “binary gender system” must be replaced by androgyny and “alternative sexualities.” Nobody dares mention that emotionally destructive behavior produces negative consequences. Ideology takes precedence over consequences. In fact, consequences are never mentioned except in the context of smoking, diet, exercise or sleep. Certainly, no one mentions the “fascinating research on the biochemistry of bonding” which reveals that casual sex is hazardous to a woman’s mental health."

I think the above has quite a bit to do with it. Also the old saying, "Idle hands are the devil's playthings." Our leisure time in America, especially for young people, is amazingly high. 100 years ago a young person's life would be consumed with school, work, family and church leaving little time to be self absorbed. Today kids aged 13 to 15 watch an average of 24.6 hours of TV per week. Much of it is completely unhealthy and causes children to have unrealistic expectations. Toss in a lack of moral framework, minimal time with parents, few role models and it is a recipe for disaster.

As for anti-depressants for children, I am sceptical of the underlying science and I suspect that "doping up" kids is often done for questionable motives.

My grandson, aged 10, was legally kidnapped, in December 2005, by order of a mysogenous, backward, country judge in rural Orleans, County, New york.

This "conservative" judge ordered that the child no longer live with his mother and step-father, but was to live with his deadbeat dad and the deadbeat's live-in girlfriend.

I believe that the Judge, Judge James Punch, was drunk, it was office party time, when he made his horrendous and hasty decision.

A taxpyer-financed lawyer was assigned, free of charge, to the deadbeat and a quack-like doctor, who no longer is a member of the AMA, then prescribed Prozac for my grandson.

Now, after 14 months of Family Court battles, tens of thousands of my dollars (lawyer's fees etc.), the child is so brainwashed that he now thinks he wants to be with his dad - Stockholm syndrome style.

I believe that using Prozac to brainwash children in this manner is unethical, and contra-indicated.

Sorry about the double post--I can't seem to get blogger to undo one of them.

New York Loner,

I certainly cannot speak to your particular case, but Prozac is not used typically to "brainwash" kids. Part of the problem with psychotropic drugs is that they are underprescribed for some kids who really need them and overprescribed for others who do not. Telling the difference is the key.

I don't want to minimize the importance of this issues, but what were the relevant populations of Americans under age 20 in 2003 vs 2004?

If there was an appreciable increase in this population from one year to the next, the absolute increase in the number of suicides may not be as alarming as it would appear. Of course, on the other hand, if the population was fairly consistent year over year, then, yes, this does seem troubling.

Actually, the suicide rate is highest for those in the "boomer" age range. Suicide is also high for those over 65. Most suicides are a result of substance abuse and depression.

I'm more concerned that it takes antidepressant drugs to stave off depression these days. Why are Americans suffering from so much depression in the first place if they have all the money, the supposedly wonderful political system and incredible personal opportunity?

Suicide is very important, but I think our culture would like to keep it a big secret too.

I wonder if there could be any correlation to the realities growing up in a post 9/11 world. I would think the future tends to look pretty bleak through the eyes of a 14 year old who pays attention to world events.

I didn't realize that it had gone through the first time as I had meant to hit preview then edited it out to make it shorter. My apologies.

Dave,

I feel fairly certain that we are talking suicides per 100,000 so it is an absolute comparison. Often people can push away the stories about increasing mental health problems as being one of increased reporting. They can't do that with suicides. It is an objective fact and a disturbing rise can't just be explained away. I laid out some of what I think the causes are. I put a great deal of the blame at the people who are actively working to destroy the family. That isn't hyperbole, there are people with that agenda.

"Suicide is very important, but I think our culture would like to keep it a big secret too."

Yes. Excluding war deaths, there have been more annual suicides than murders on record in America for as long as such things have been tracked. I remember running across that fact a few years ago, and I found it so incredible that I had to confirm it from 5 or 6 different sources before I'd believe it.

I think that the black box warning on antidepressants has had a chilling effect on appopriate treatment for teens. I work out of a pediatrician's office, and the doctors here have told me that they make more referrals for mild to moderate depression that they used to treat themselves.

The problem is that many parents are quite resistant to taking their children to a psychiatrist or psychologist. So the depression is not treated.

It seems as if a few cases of tragic suicide has been handled in such a way as to inadvertantly produce more of the same.

And prozac, zoloft and the anti-depressants are terrible mind control drugs. For mind control you need big time heavy meds, stuff like sodium penethol which is not used for medical treatment. Some psychiatric meds do dope up a child, and that is unacceptable unless the problems are worse. Doping up a mildly hyper child is unacceptable, doping up a severly self-abusive child (head banging that causes consussions and brain damage) is another matter entirely.

The suicide data are preliminary and don’t show whether suicides might have been concentrated among one gender.

But according to the CDC, "Of the total number of suicides among ages 15 to 24 in 2001, 86% (n=3,409) were male and 14% (n=562) were female (Anderson and Smith 2003)."

Gerald, by your comments, it seems Grossman is focusing primarily on females. But young males are killing themselves at over 6 times the rate as females. And, I'm sure for many of the same reasons that Grossman identifies. Most universities cater more to females than males. They have Commission for Women and/or Women's Studies Program with no parallel for males.

Universities have become a more hostile place for males. High schools and below are also, with large majorities of female teachers who value the "more appropriate" behavior of girls over the generally more boisterous boys.

If you want to significantly decrease youth suicide, you better look at how we treat boys and young men. But, few care that the number of males in colleges, medical schools, and law schools has decreased dramatically over recent years. Why would we expect them to care if these same males are killing themselves at higher rates.

It is also important to note this statement in the article: "The advocacy group receives funding from makers of antidepressants,..." It's hard to trust such a group. I'm sure medications help but how bad of a problem was youth suicide 40 or 50 years ago?

I think its generally agreed that one of the best ways to combat depression is to undertake some physical activity.

Kids are much less physically active these days than probably at any time in our past. Lordy, I get depressed looking at a computer screen for several hours (except when I'm visiting THIS site). So many youngsters today spend so many hours playing video games and so forth, I have to wonder if this doesnt add to the problem.

"I'm more concerned that it takes antidepressant drugs to stave off depression these days. Why are Americans suffering from so much depression in the first place if they have all the money, the supposedly wonderful political system and incredible personal opportunity?"

Bingo, Cham; that's my question too. Maybe all the money and everything else just raises impossible expectations and leads to a lot of anger.

Gerald, I would be very reluctant to generalize about depression and suicide from data on Swedes. It's as common as blondness there.

“radical politics” has replaced “common sense” in the campus health and counseling centers to the detriment of students’ well-being. In short, Dr. Grossman declared that her profession was “hijacked” and that college students are the “casualties” of “radical activism” by the health professionals on college campuses

I would have thought this was alarmist or exaggeration, but.... I had a good friend who was a counselor at a college campus years ago. She was initially very excited about the job: most of the people she worked with were women, and shared her feminist viewpoint. One day she called me in tears; several of the women she worked with had staged an "intervention" with her. They felt that she was clearly a lesbian, needed to face reality and divest herself of her husband and all of the trappings of married life! This was patently ridiculous, as she was very happily married at the time (and still is). They did such a mind-job on her that she ended up going to a therapist herself because, over the course of the next few months, they would not let it go. Unfortunately, she was unable to perceive the agenda behind their actions, because she herself was very sympathetic to their politics.

Anyway, I got the distinct impression that just about every issue was seen by these women through the prism of a radical anti-male attitude, and I hate to think how kids going there for help were treated.

I realize this story is anecdotal, but it seems to lend some credence to the quote above. Who knows if it affects the rate of suicide--but I would want my doctor working to improve my mental health, not a political agenda.

I've never understood why it takes so long to collate the data either. I suspect it's because the data is collected only annually (when it could be collected monthly), and then there's all that post facto checking and cross-referencing to do.

Any decent reasearch- or database company could turn the data around in a couple of weeks. I've turned around MUCH bigger databases in far less time.

My suspicion is that the data is not entered onto the database in a manner conducive to quick reporting -- an easy fix by itself -- but I also suspect that many states have antiquated data collection- and storage methodologies.

"Maybe all the money and everything else just raises impossible expectations and leads to a lot of anger."

I think that is a valid point, but a tough one to measure. Reminds me of a 4th of July celebration I went to last year. I spent a while talking to this old farmer, a guy who had been friends with my grandfather. He grew up in Oklahoma and suffered through the Dust Bowl and the Depression. Towards the end of the evening he made this comment, which has really stuck with me: "When I was younger everybody was dirt poor but we were happy for what we had. Today, everybody has everything they could ever want, and they are the most miserable bunch of bastards I've ever seen in my life."

"I grew up being told we were just a step away from WW3 and the nukes were going to wipe out everything but the roaches."

Yep, I remember it well. How strange it was when the Inevitable Nuclear War scenario went away in the post-Reagan era. It may all come back again but boy the hiatus was welcome.

I agree that physical exercise helps greatly to prevent depression. But also on college campuses I think binge drinking rates have skyrocketed in the last 10 years..can you imagine, coming to school with high hopes, a goal, or perhaps seeking a goal, and having it all derailed in your freshman year by recurrent hangovers and their cousin, depression, and maybe even accidental pregancy, abortion, broken relationships, grades going downhill, flunking/incompletes, dropping out--all the good stuff that comes with nonstop merrymaking?

Welcome back! In response to your question, there have been studies showing a small increase in suicide in the intial period following the start of the antidepressant; however, that is why clincial vigilence is needed. And the studies are mixed, some show a reduction, some a slight increase. Some docs believe that some people do have an idiosyncratic reaction to some antidepressants. However, the black box warning for kids scared away many professionals from prescribing these drugs for kids, regardless of whether it was the right thing to do or not. It is actually hard to find and get a child psychiatrist to prescribe these drugs and this is unfortunate, in my opinion, as many children and teens need them but also need the increased supervision and monitoring that goes with treating a child with medication.

I think this is quite interesting and I also think it is interesting that one would advocate the increased use of antidepressants. Rather than change the constitution of our society and the problems it engenders, we would rather take and issue these drugs to help people cope with what everyone knows is a broken sociological template. If they take drugs to ameliorate themselves to the world as presently construed, then the thinking is that they will then be in a career or some other novelty that will make the past seem like a dream. However, the reality is that here too they will learn with age that the promised land of adulthood is as barren a wasteland as the disillusionment of adolescence and they will need the drugs of alcohol, sex or incessant diversion to keep their minds busy forgetting the sad realities surrounding them. No, Dr. Helen, I do not think it is time to reissue or increase the dispensation of antidepressants but rather it is time to change our entire society--and the pain my be severe at the outset but what would follow would surely be better than what modernity has settled for.

Our culture makes it very difficult to look at an average life and think it is acceptable. Suicide is just the tip of the iceberg for mental disorder in young people. Check out new terms for young women "pro-ana" and "thinspiration" or "thinspo." There are about a zillion girls with Xanga blogs urging each other on to not eat. Pro-ana is, of course, pro anorexia. Here's the slogan of one at random:

"I'm 23 and I all I wanna be is perfect....I live in a messed up life, that makes me crash day after day. I want people to love me, to be happy, to be have a perfect life and be perfect..." -- yeah, she's not going to be disappointed.

Here is a thinspo Youtube video. A few of the girls are athletic. Others look concentration camp victims with lots of visible bones yet they are the role models for these girls. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZWTzXrRadE

Here is the name of a couple of blog rings:ana tipshunger hurts but starvin worksdiet coke and thinspiration. because skinny jeans aren't meant for fat people.Pro-Ana/MiaNo Thanks, I'm Not Hungry

Here are the top tags for a random site: anger depressed depression diet eating hate suicide

Unfortunately, there will always be kids and teens who have mental health problems that will warrant some type of intervention. Of course, it is best to avoid medication if possible with psychotherapy or other techniques but sometimes, chemical imbalances make this impossible. If you have lived with a depressed or bipolar child, you will know that sometimes meds are a godsend and sometimes the only answer. I agree that societal change is also important, especially for those kids who suffer from situational depression from bullying or being a poor fit with their environment.

Mercurior,

I agree about the suicide literature etc. 80% of all completed suicides are committed by men and brochures often show a girl or woman. I sometimes wonder if suicide is not taken as seriously because it is what men do. However, in China, more women commit suicide and no one seems to care about that. It could just be a taboo area--that one is "bad" for taking their life etc.

I read posts by young men who were convinced that a woman would want to kill herself he she were "forced" to have a baby. In Victorian literature, the finale is often the death of a woman character, often a convenient "solution" to many dramatic dilemmas.

This is Anon 3:14---No, I do not simply mean changing situational circumstances or environment per se, I mean a total cultural and societal change on the lines of absolute reform. The template is broken, why do we continue to engage the template with tools forged by the template? Throw it all out.

I'm wondering if this upswing in depression is like that postulated for autism, where it may just be diagnosed more often rather than a massive increase in occurrence. We don't go in for the stiff upper lip much anymore, and I think that has a huge affect, where we're more willing to rebalance our brain juices rather than just trying to bull through it (and winding up going off a bridge).

I suspect that lack of exercise and a lack of sunlight are pretty big factors. (lack of exposure to sunlight has been suggested as a big part of seasonal depression) I also think the "antidepressants" play a significant role. I don't have a fistful of clinical studies in hand, I just think that a lot of the brain candy is bad news and it is such a big business that a lot of the negative effects are supressed or not studied.

i think its in part societies fault, everyone is being pressured to have kids, to be thin, to be happy, to be successful, et al.

no one has time to stop and look round, in holidays you do more work than work. (especially if you have kids). we dont have down time.

i get depressed, sometimes really badly, but i use music my tunes of doom, they just cheer me up. no drugs needed. there seems to me to be an over prescription culture, if you have a headache take a pill, you have a fever take a chill pill (joke intended). and so on, if your depressed take prozac if your happy take this..

There are several ways to remake society and some would be extremely painful to most. I believe the American people are fast asleep, stupified by materialism and consumerism. We do not possess the tools in the current construct to bring the happiness or contentment every man seeks. Psychology, as a tool, may be able to identify the source or the root of a particular problem or action but psychology cannot assuage the guilt engendered by a particular deed or action. Rather, they issue the drugs and therapy we are talking about. This cannot truly 'cure' the individual. So, when I say the template is unquestionably broken what I am saying is that the American, pseudo-Western culture has reached it's zenith---there is no more fuel to keep the engine going and the tools forged by it cannot and will not satisfy. This 'culture' is baneful and insipid lacking in beauty, proportion and order. The heart and the mind longs for these and as I have said; the template and the tools of our pseudo-culture cannot bring these into fruition. Thus, it is my view that the West needs an absolute reform.

After reflecting on this topic for at least 300ms, I postulate the following: life is hard...it's harder if your stupid.

Yeah, let's change all of society, that will work!

Society changes people, not the other way around. People are being pushed into colleges, when they should be laying bricks and driving trucks. But those occupations are low status, dead-end jobs. The pressure is to succeed at the high status jobs. Our society is evolving intelligence over brawn. The brawny have no place, so they die. Evolution.

It's a shame, since in a few years or so, manual labor is going to rise in value. Until we invent useful robots, anyways.

"This 'culture' is baneful and insipid lacking in beauty, proportion and order."

The same as all other cultures if you actually live in them day to day, as opposed to observing them like a tourist through a shimmer of exoticism. Life is just pretty hard and boring unless you decide to see the beauty in it. It is a decision.

Lose the scare quotes. They look like adolescent rebellion. This "culture" is as much a culture as any of the other cultures that are the objects of adoration of those who enjoy despising it. Oh, and another thing - this American culture is certainly Western - fully European, fully Greco-Roman, etc -, not "pseudo-", so when you use "pseudo" it looks like you are flinging that as a term of abuse at the culture, a pseudo-culture. So it is sloppy and inexact to formulate it the way you have, and that also looks juvenile and semi-literate.

It has been fashionable to sneer at American culture for at least a century now - the Germans brought the art to perfection in the Nazi era - and at Western culture for at least as long, in case you fancy yourself daring or cutting-edge or truly rebellious. In fact it's a very standard and well-accepted pose, so there's your rebelliousness for you. You of course may be too young to have noticed any of this, but plenty of people have gotten there before you and the old thing is pretty well ragged with use.

There is an absolute reform and it's called renunciation, or asceticism. It's the life of the spirit. You cannot reform cultures to achieve the state of perfection you seek, because culture and living around other humans, with their egos and wants and needs and fears, is itself the problem. All cultures have their good and sick sides. They just have different ones.

I know it is so tempting to look longingly at some ther culture as if those people, those people, now they really know how to live. It's all the better if it is some little-known culture, something remote that other people are not really familiar with. It's the kind of tourism snobbery that most people never identify let alone defend themselves against.

Paxil is prescribed like candy by pediatricians and Internal Medicine MD's.

You might even experience the Gyn prescribing Paxil for your daughter.

This stuff causes WILD personality changes in some kids. Even Suicide.

Knowing the effects of Paxil on adolescents and the elderly I went thru the roof when they gave it to my daughter and my wife said "Well her pediatrician SAID it would help her" (Really ? Where is his Board Cert. in Psychiatry, Hmmm I don't see that Framed copy in the office, Huh )

SH*T I don't need to describe here what it did to her in detail -- but it put her in a Psych ward for a month of 24 hour observation till she was weaned off it. And you have to brought off of it slowly.

Maybe they need to do a "less than professionally supervised Psychotropic Prescription" study of the suicides.

Its a contributor and dirty little secret the Medical Community is VERY defensive about and refuses to acknowledge or Police their own.

Joe Barton (R-Tx) made the decison about excess suicides on antidepressants IMHO. About 3 years ago, an FDA administrator testified as an expert witness in a trial for Pfizer on Zoloft. His office had a budget of $400,000. Congresman Barton determined the FDA budget. After his testimony, his budget was $0 (cf. U.S. Medicine). A year later, Mr. Barton bellowed that there were kids killing themselves because of the antideprssnats and he wanted a report on it and what the FDA was going to do. 'Yes sir, right way' was the response from FDA officials. The FDA mandarins took the occasion to point out in the labeling change that bipolar patients, not those Major Depression patients for whom the drug was indicated, would be more likely to be agitated and suicidal on antidepresants. The data has been that the rate of suicide generally is inversely proportional in varying locales in the US to the rate of antidepressant prescriptions. That is, more prescriptions less suicide.

I agree that children should be monitored closely when on these medications. Due to a shortage of child psychiatrists, pedicatricians and general practitioners with no or little experience in psychiatry often prescribe these medications. This is one reason I would like to see psychologists prescribe--we have a great deal of training and are used to monitoring medicines anyway and follow kids closely. There are some states such as New Mexico that allow psychologists to prescribe but the laws are fought at many stages by MD's and others who do not want us on their turf.

I believe the American people are fast asleep, stupified by materialism and consumerism.

Some are, I think claiming that the whole country is stupified is ridiculous.

We do not possess the tools in the current construct to bring the happiness or contentment every man seeks.

Why should this be a goal? This is impossible to determine or measure, let alone provide. That is why communism, collectivism, and related ideologies fail. And that is why markets tend to be successful, men pursuing their own interests benefit everyone.

Psychology, as a tool, may be able to identify the source or the root of a particular problem or action but psychology cannot assuage the guilt engendered by a particular deed or action.

Why is your assumption that everyone's problems are due to "guilt engendered by a particular deed or action"? I certainly don't have any guilt like this (mainly because I haven't performed any serious criminal or harmful actions), and I suspect that most people don't.

Rather, they issue the drugs and therapy we are talking about. This cannot truly 'cure' the individual.

Psychology or psychiatry certainly have their problems, especially when they are used for fraudulent, criminal, abusive, manipulative, etc. ends. And the drugs are certainly abused, especially when used involuntarily and without proper disclosure.

And with the often false assumption you are making - that everyone has some kind of act making them feel guilty - I can see why you would not "cure" many people. You certainly wouldn't cure people you falsely diagnosed as ill.

So, when I say the template is unquestionably broken what I am saying is that the American, pseudo-Western culture has reached it's zenith---there is no more fuel to keep the engine going and the tools forged by it cannot and will not satisfy. This 'culture' is baneful and insipid lacking in beauty, proportion and order. The heart and the mind longs for these and as I have said; the template and the tools of our pseudo-culture cannot bring these into fruition. Thus, it is my view that the West needs an absolute reform.

This sounds like a lot of claptrap. The beauty of our society is that everyone is free to pursue the type of culture that satisfies them. From the highest and most sophisticated to the lowest and most banal. So to say that you're seeking to impose your choices on everyone else in some kind of "reform" seems pretty arrogant to me.

"That is why communism, collectivism, and related ideologies fail. And that is why markets tend to be successful, men pursuing their own interests benefit everyone"

You forgot one economic construct:Distributism---check it out it is where I want to be.

http://www.distributism.com/compare.htm

and then you can take the test:

http://www.distributism.com/wageslave.htm

"The beauty of our society is that everyone is free to pursue the type of culture that satisfies them"

Well, I think this is hogwash and the very problem of our society---beauty lies in the domain of capricious choice? No, the fact is that this country gives lip service to plurality but rather it seeks to conform all to a baleful uniformity. In the so-called distinctiveness of the American citizen we find nothing more than a sick, weak and tired uniformity. Freedom is not license and what satiates an individual may not be what is best for him or for society. The notion that the individual may arbitrarily choose what is 'good' for him without concern for society is a product of the Endarkenment aka Enlightenment. However, the Endarkenment has failed for there no longer exists free enquiry and there is code-speak about what can and cannot be discussed. Remember, the true values of the Endarkenment/Enlightenment were to subject any and all subjects to open and rigorous scrutiny; even the most sacred tenants of religion. But what has happened is that we can no longer talk openly about historical records (holocaust) or about the dogmas of the modern religion (evolution) or even possessing the temerity to challenge the false priesthood of the judiciary. No, my friend---we are not free here in this country rather we are totally enslaved and it is high time for Americans to consider leaving this country for it is in the throes of death.

Well, being against personal choice means that you think someone should decide what's "good" for everyone else and use coercion to force it on them. And let me guess - you think you or those you agree with should be the ones to force it on them. That's totalitarianism. No thanks.

I looked up distributism - its pretty close to socialism/communism. It just creates a new elite - those who do the planning and distribute the property, capital, etc. And you are likely to develop the same sets of problems as socialism/communism down the road.

I know we're not free in this country. And I know the economy has problems.(the vast majority caused by government meddling, fiat currency, cronyism, corruption, etc. - not markets or capitalism itself) But as a libertarian I realize the way to make the country more free it to allow people more choice and allow markets to work their magic.

Your theories, both economic and social, sound like a recipe for misery, oppression, starvation, and suffering.